In the last decades, the variety and flexibility of audio provision has increased dramatically. Indeed, the introduction of spatial audio, digital audio encoding and decoding, miniaturization of audio devices etc. has resulted in audio being consumed in many different ways. In addition, the additional opportunities and functionality have resulted in new user experiences and use scenarios being developed.
For example, audio devices have been developed which allow multiple source signals to be rendered simultaneously but being spatially differentiated. Such audio devices may decode a plurality of source signals to provide decoded signals which are then spatially processed such that they appear to a listener to originate from different directions. Examples of such audio players may be found in the article “Spatial Track Transition Effects for Headphone Listening” by Harma, A. and S. van de Par; 10th Int. Conf. Digital Audio Effects (DAFx 10); 2007; Bordeaux; France.
However, although such processing tends to provide an attractive user experience, it also tends to have associated disadvantages. In particular, the complexity and computational demand of the processing tends to be quite high thereby requiring relatively powerful processing platforms. This increases cost and power consumption which is particularly undesirable for small portable audio players for the consumer segment. Alternatively, complexity and processing demands are reduced by compromising the quality of the processing or restricting the number of audio source signals that can be processed. However, this results in a degraded user experience.
Hence, an improved approach would be advantageous, and in particular an approach allowing increased flexibility, reduced complexity, reduced computational demands, facilitated operation, reduced power consumption, improved audio quality, an improved user experience and/or improved performance would be advantageous.